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Fall 2009 | Volume 68, No. 1
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The Importance of Musical Scholarship
by Rebecca Carter
The business of the School of Church Music is to reach people with the Gospel. Whether that medium consists of one man and a guitar, an intricate orchestra, or a pipe organ, one over-arching rule applies.
“The secular world will not respect or respond to a musician without excellence or scholarship,” says David Thye, professor of church music and Robert L. Burton Chair of Conducting at Southwestern Seminary.
“In order to be sought after regularly [as a musician], a high level of artistry, knowledge, and performance standard is essential. Once these things have been established, one can share a personal faith in Christ Jesus that is genuinely accepted.”
Thye demonstrated this to students this summer when they traveled to New York. Thye conducted a 200-voice chorus, including 25 singers from Southwestern’s Master Chorale, and professional soloists accompanied by the New England Symphonic Orchestra in Carnegie Hall.
Allen Lott, chair of the music history department at Southwestern and associate dean of the music school’s academic division, believes Southwestern musicians have a special calling when fulfilling the greatest commandment in this way.
“Pursuing excellence in church music, in particular, demonstrates we love God with all of our heart, soul, and mind – all of which are required to be a great musician – and want to offer Him in our worship the very best we have. We should not be content with mediocrity.”
Lott believes theological precision and biblical accuracy should also be reflected in music.
“One recent text [of a song] I came across had the phrase ‘if such a thing as grace exists,’” Lott said. To that he exclaims “ ‘If?’ There is no ‘if.’ It’s not ‘if grace exists,’ but ‘because grace exists.’ If we sing this heresy in church, people will begin to think we are not certain.”
Music professors at Southwestern are not content to live in the ivory tower, though they have the pleasure and duty of visiting it almost every day, Lott says. Instead, they focus on living out their faith in whatever spheres of influence God has given them.
In addition to sitting as chorus master of the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, Thye ministers with other South-western musicians during seminary chapel services, often using classic hymns and arrangements of contemporary Christian music.
“I want to grow with my students to be a lifelong learner and to passionately care for people, that all would see and hear and respond to God,” says Thye.
“I want to be knowledgeable, scholarly … but [not] lose the intimate, heartfelt joy of Jesus in my soul,” he says. Though it is not easy, “my personal desire is to equip students with scholarship that will serve them in any arena the Lord chooses to use them in.”
Lott, in addition to his duties at Southwestern, serves the people of Travis Avenue Baptist Church in Fort Worth by playing clarinet in their orchestra. He also serves on music-focused mission trips, where he sees music open doors that would otherwise be closed.
“I have seen music touch the heart in a way that makes it open to the truth,” Lott says.
Programs that bring Southwestern students and faculty into the realm of classical and contemporary fine music are exceedingly valuable, first to give them a venue in which to use the gifts God gave them and then to develop their love for fine music.
Creations such as Handel’s Messiah are “profound texts [set] to some of the most enduring music ever composed,” says Lott. “These concerts are valuable for training musicians, for providing them [with] some of the most wonderful musical experiences they will ever have, and helping them experience the glories of great music.”
Citing Philippians 4, Lott says dwelling on things that are true, honorable, pure, lovely, and excellent “is the measure we should apply to all things to which we devote our time and attention. The great music of the ages easily measures up to these standards.”
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